Tuesday, September 05, 2006

Tonight with Trevor McDonald

Last night on ITV there was a very interesting program at 8pm called "Tonight" which dealt with the influx of migrant workers into this country.

Instead of showing influx in a negative light it in fact showed how positive this was for our country and for the Hospitality and Catering industry in particular, which has always been progressive in its use of people from other countries as a resource for potential staff.

It showed in particular that instead of taking jobs from the British population they were only fulfilling those roles in the UK that the resident population was either unable or unwilling to fulfil on their own.

I must in all fairness show the point that in some trades (notably the building trade) there have been some redundancies because of this. But I believe that from a purely businesses point of view it only made sense for Building firms to replace their highly paid tradesmen with equally qualified workers if those workers are willing to work for minimum wage (5.05 per hour) instead of over ten pounds per hour that is expected by British workers.

All in all I think (although I am biased) that using this excellent resource for staff is great for our industry and can only help the industry to grow and expand which at the end of the day is what we all want.

Tuesday, August 29, 2006

500,000 Poles in the UK

You may have read in the news papers or heard on the news that there are 500,000 migrant Polish workers currently in the UK. The vast majority of which are gainfully employed in various Industry’swith almost 0% claiming any government assistance ( financially or otherwise).

With such a resource of available labour why do you still have trouble finding the staff you require for your business?

It’s very simple.

CONTACT

You have no contact with the Polish community in the UK.

We can contact and advertise for you within the Polish community both online and in the Polish newspapers made for Poles in the UK.

Friday, August 18, 2006

Contracts verses verbal agreements.

I have recently been made painfully aware of the difference between a written contract and a verbal agreement.

I was going about business as usual on Monday and had just sent an e-mail to a client of mine who had agreed to use my services but had yet to return the contract I had sent him.

Now I had kept this person aware at all times what was happening, he had asked me to provide him someone at short notice and had agreed to employ the person I had provided.

I therefore (trustingly) told the new employee that he could purchase his ticket and travel to England to his new job.

The time between the Employer choosing and his new employee arriving was only SIX days.Now I personally do not think that six days is very long but obviously it was to long for them as they contacted me a day before he was due to arrive to tell me they had employed someone else.

I was noticeably (and understandably) annoyed by this turn of events and was unfortunately unable to place him anywhere else at such short notice.

This only left me one option and that was to tell my unfortunate applicant that he couldn't come and to refund him the price of his ticket.

I hope to say lesson learned and that this wont happen again but due to the business I'm in anything is possible.

Thursday, August 03, 2006

Polish staff, Finding the right staff.

There seem to be thousands of Poles in the UK these days, there are articles in the lower brow newspapers about sending them home and about them taking jobs from English people but this is simply not true.

The unemployment rate hasn't changed very much in years so why do these people complain.

We who have worked in the hotel industry for years know that there has always been a prevalence of foreign staff in our industry and finding good English staff is a near Herculean task.

Having so many people available to work in England doesn't mean that any of them are suitable or infact desirable. Many of the hardcore of unemployed people in the UK (you know them)have no intention of finding employment and in this ever growing industry the need for staff will be on the increase for many years to come.